Wednesday, March 5, 2014

The Worst Book

I love reading books to my kids.I love snuggling up and getting their
undivided attention for a little bit.I
love reading my childhood favorites to them and seeing their reaction.I really do enjoy reading with my kids.

Except when the book sucks.

And sometimes books just suck.Sometimes the story is ridiculous or the
illustrations are crappy.Whatever the
reason, I’m sure all parents have at one time or another come across a book
they simply cannot stand.

Today I happened to stumble across just such a book.

We got the book from the library this week.As usual when I’m exploring new children’s
books I thumbed through the first couple of pages to see if it was something we’d
be interested in.It was a story about a
knight and a dragon and it was by an author who I knew and liked.But oh, man, am I pissed at that guy now!

You see, only the first few pages had words on them.The rest of the pages were pictures…just
pictures.I’m sorry, did you take a nap
in the middle of writing this book?Go
on vacation?Have a nervous
breakdown?Where are the words?I want the words.I got the book home and started "reading" it (and I use that term loosely) to the kids. I was already into it by the time I realized my mistake. What the fuuuuuuuck is going on here? Where are the words? I started to panic.

That doesn’t sound so horrible, you may say.But let’s remember when there are only pictures
in a book the pictures need to be explained.And trying to explain the pictures is work.And know what I don’t need in my
life right now?More work.

Like, Hello! Mr. Author Guy…you only did HALF YOUR JOB! If I
wanted to be responsible for coming up with an engaging story to accompany of
bunch of pictures I would have BECOME AN AUTHOR MYSELF!

Some parents may not mind picture books.And that’s a personal choice.In fact, when kids are really little a book
with just pictures is great for going ‘Oh, look! A moon! A block! A martini!’(What? An upside down triangle doesn’t look
like a martini to you? I digress…)

When your kids get older they expect you to explain the
pictures. In detail. I couldn’t believe I got
sucked into a book with only, like,three pages of words. And two of the word pages were only one sentence! That’s how they get ya.Then after they get ya you turn the page and
see this…

Soooo…ummm…they’re training to fight each other but
apparently they both kind of suck at it? And, like, the dragon is all ‘I’m
gonna breathe some nasty fire at you’ and the knight says ‘Whateva! I’m gonna
run you through with this long stick thing’ (which probably has a name but I
don’t know what it is).

And as you’re looking at the picture you think the next page
will definitely have words on it cause who the hell cops out of a story line three
pages in!

Oh. This guy.This guy
does that.

And so they’re going to fight each other.And they’re running towards each other.The dragon has his fire breath and the knight
has his stick thing, which I hope he got a little more practice with cause damn
he was bad at that before! And pretty much this is the most boring picture I've ever seen. Literally nothing is happening.

Honestly…the actual story written by the actual author comes
back at some point, right?

Wrong.

Well, looks like that didn’t go so well.I don’t know why they thought it would.Neither of those assholes was very good at
his job.You’re an f’ing DRAGON!You’re sole responsibility in life is to
breathe fire on things and you F’ed it up? Worthless. And hey, knight? You really shoulda called in
sick this day.Also WTF is that princess
doing in the background?Does she have a
purpose in this story?

Oh, she does have a purpose.Her purpose is to be the typical nagging woman telling those dumb asses ‘I
told you so!’ The moral of the story is Bitches be right pretty much all the
time.

The other moral of the story is that I'm really, really shitty at making up stories...

And all of a sudden everyone is happy and eating
hamburgers. But since the Dragon and the Knight were such failures in life their food was contaminated, the whole town got
Mad Cow Disease and everyone died…The End!

See, Author Man? See what happens when you take the lazy
route?Where was your editor during the
writing process?You could have written
like ten more sentences and I wouldn’t have to hate you this much.

Enough with this half ass ‘let the kids use their
imaginations’ bullshit because really it’s the parents who then have to use
their imaginations.And in my
imagination there is a widespread disease outbreak in the kingdom.And the fact that I even had to come up with
that ending is entirely your fault.How do
you feel now?

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I'm a sarcastic tell it like it is mom who knows that parenting is hard...but tequila helps...
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